Melissa Nason (left) and Melissa Agunloye (right) discuss homeless during a recent interview. (Photo: Greg Childress)
Melissa Turner calls it “Post-Traumatic Homeless Disorder” (PTHD). It’s the persistent anxiety, Turner explained, that someone who recently experienced homelessness frequently experiences after finding a permanent place to live.
“Even when you get out of homelessness, you have that fear in the back of your head that you’re going to jump right back on that [homeless] bandwagon, someone’s going to come along and take it [your new home] away from you,” Turner said.
Turner moved into a public housing community about six years ago. She didn’t hang any art or photographs on the walls the first year, worried that something would go wrong, and she’d soon have to move.
“I didn’t make it into a home,” Turner said of her apartment. “I just had this gut feeling.”
Painful lessons and practical advice
Turner is one of three women named Melissa, all single mothers, who shared their story of homelessness with NC Newsline during a recent visit to the Triangle. The three were in the area to launch a book they helped write entitled, The Three Melissas: The Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness. The 183-page book offers practical advice — from remembering to show gratitude to those who help you and your kids to educating children about inappropriate touching — on surviving homelessness.
Turner ended up homeless after being struck by an ex-husband during a disagreement. The husband hit her once and she packed up and left. After experiencing several years of homelessness and being sexually assaulted by men who offered shelter and expected sex in return, Turner wonders if she should have stayed in the marriage, even though she suspects the abuse would have gotten worse.
“Had I known things would end up the way they ended up, I would not have left my husband,” Turner said. “We’re giving advice [in the book] and it’s sage advice, it’s things you need to know and very realistic, but I would be like, do what you need to do to not be homeless.”
Melissa Turner (Photo: Greg Childress)
The “Three Melissas” assisted Diane Nilan, a longtime homeless advocate, former shelter director and filmmaker from Chicago and Diana Bowman, an experienced educator who served as director of the National Center for Homeless Education for two decades, in writing the guide for families experiencing homelessness. Nilan calls the Three Melissas featured in the book “experts.”
Nilan helped to implement the Illinois Education for Homeless Children Act in 1994 that was later incorporated into federal legislation with the reauthorization of the McKinney-Vento Assistance Improvement Act — the primary piece of federal legislation related to the education of children and youth experiencing homelessness. She now lives in Blowing Rock. Bowman lives in Greensboro.
A guidebook for public school personnel
Nilan and Bowman see the new book as a valuable tool for McKinney-Vento liaisons working in schools and school districts to help remove barriers that prevent children and youth experiencing homelessness from enrolling in school and enjoying academic success. Too many liaisons lack the practical know-how of individuals who have survived homelessness, the authors said.
“I would do trainings [on McKinney-Vento] and I would hear from school staff that they totally didn’t understand family homelessness and recognize it at all,” Nilan said. “Then, I would talk to the families that were having trouble getting their kids into school and I realized these are folks that could talk and make a case [for the rights of students experiencing homelessness] if they had a voice.”
After helping to “birth” a more comprehensive and effective McKinney-Vento law, Nilan left her job training educators in the Chicago area about the new law. She packed her belongings into a small camper and set off across the country to interview and film families experiencing homelessness.
It was on Nilan’s 20-year trek across America that she met the Three Melissas — Melissa Agunloye of Chicago; Melissa Nason of Florida, and Turner of Kansas. Each Melissa is identified by first name and first initial of their last names in the book. The three women gave NC Newsline permission to use full names.
Diane Nilan (Photo: Greg Childress)
On their trip to the Triangle, Nilan, Bowman and the three Melissas met with McKinney-Vento liaisons and community groups to share information about the new book and to provide first-hand accounts from people who know what it’s like to experience homelessness.
“You can approach this academically and tell people about the law [McKinney-Vento] but there are no experts like the experts who have experienced it, and people are so receptive to that,” Bowman said.
Policy changes are needed to properly count, serve homeless families
In addition to informing and inspiring McKinney-Vento liaisons, the authors hope the book will bring about policy changes that improve the lives and experiences of homeless people and their families.
“I’d like to see the book be the catalyst for change in policy, in procedures, in attitudes that people have all the way from daycare, up to schools and agencies that we have to present ourselves to,” Nason said.
Nason and Nilan met in 2004 soon after Hurricane Ivan ripped through the Caribbean islands and the southeastern U.S. Nason, a mother of two lost everything in the storm. It was an especially devastating blow as Nason had just gotten back on her feet after a previous bout of homelessness when the storm hit. She’d graduated college, found an apartment and landed a job as a coordinator in a county program for people experiencing homelessness.
“Hurricane Ivan took everything that I’d rebuilt and destroyed it,” Nason said. “One thing happened — Ivan — and it took everything.”
With Nilan’s help, Nason and her young family were able to move into a small mobile home provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). She still lives in the FEMA trailer.
“Through all of that, Diane [Nilan] was very instrumental in making the phone calls,” Nason said. “If we hadn’t met, I don’t things would have worked out the way they did because there were so many times, I was just exasperated with the fact that there should be a system, there should be support services and there just weren’t.”
Nilan said she got involved in advocacy work because families experiencing homelessness — many of which are led by women — seem not to matter to local, state and national leaders.
“The role [of women] in our country has never reached an equal point and so the needs of women aren’t considered important, and so their kids aren’t important,” Nilan said.
Bowman added that there has been more of an emphasis the past 20 years on chronically homeless adults than on families.
Diana Bowman (Photo: Greg Childress)
“Families just aren’t in the picture and so, the resources have gone primarily to supporting adults without families, veteran homelessness and chronically homeless adults,” Bowman said. “Families have just gone under the radar.”
One big policy change the authors and the three Melissas hope to help spur is a change in the way homelessness is defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The HUD definition does not include families living in hotels/motels and in doubled-up situations due to the loss of housing. They want the HUD definition changed to match the definition in the McKinney-Vento Act so that more services can be extended to families living in hotels/motels and in doubled-up situations.
“If you were paying for your own motel room and you tried to get HUD housing assistance, you’re not considered homeless, so you don’t get the HUD housing assistance,” Nilan said. “The one thing that we’ve pushed for the past 20 years is that change in definition, which would have a significant impact on the help that families would get.”
Expanding the definition would open federal services and resources to hundreds of thousands more families, Nilan said. The number of people identified as homeless would grow substantially, she said.
“Under HUD’s definition, 650,000 people are counted as homeless,” Nilan said. “The [nation’s] schools have identified 1.2 million this year as homeless. That number is probably half of what really is the case and that doesn’t include babies or toddlers. It doesn’t include the older kids.”
Nilan believes that when homeless families and unaccompanied youth are accounted for, the number of people experiencing homelessness climbs to more than seven million.
“We’re looking at 650,000 or seven million,” Nilan said. “Congress doesn’t want to hear that it’s seven million, because it would have to cough up some funds.”
“The rent is still too high”
Nilan met Agunloye in 2010 through a friend who ran a charity in the Chicago suburbs. Agunloye had lost housing and was living in a motel with five young children. She was 22 years-old at the time and working multiple jobs.
“What made Diane unique is that she comes to you,” Agunloye said. “She met my family, she met my kids, she saw my situation and she helped.”
Agunloye was struggling at the time to pay for hotel rooms she and her kids lived in after leaving a relative’s home. She described the living arrangement as an “unstable situation.”
“Things were substantially cheaper back then, I want to say 15 years ago,” Agunloye said. “If they’re paying you $8 an hour [15 years ago] and you’re trying to make ends meet, now with wages at $17 an hour in some places, it’s still like the $8 an hour back then. Things are so high.”
Agunloye’s situation has improved. She and her kids has lived in the same house for three years.
“That’s a good thing because we bounced from place to place,” she said. “The kids have stayed in the same school for several years, so I’m happy for that.”
Agunloye added, “The rent is still too high, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’ve learned a lot throughout the years like how to coupon, how to budget and now my kids are old enough to work so they can help me with the bills. The situation is completely different.”
Meanwhile, Turner has been relatively free of PTHD the past five years, but the old anxiety has begun to resurface. Her youngest daughter is a high school senior and turns 18 in July. The daughter is eager to move to Texas. After she leaves, Turner worries that she could lose public housing.
“I feel the anxiety building because I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Turner said. “Funny enough, I’m trying to make as many contacts as I can, do a little networking, because you never know who you might have to ask for a couch [to sleep on].”